"Span" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was only an hour's journey, but Mrs. Munt had to raise and lower the window again and again. She passed through the South Welwyn Tunnel, saw light for a moment, and entered the North Welwyn Tunnel, of tragic fame. She traversed the immense viaduct, whose arches span untroubled meadows and the dreamy flow of Tewin Water. She skirted the parks of politicians. At times the Great North Road accompanied her, more suggestive of infinity than any railway, awakening, after a nap of a hundred years, to such life as is conferred by the stench of ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... badge. If the extent of solemn wood could thus safeguard a tall stag from the hunter's hounds and horses, might not you also play hide-and-seek, in these groves, with all the pangs and trepidations of man's life, and elude Death, the mighty hunter, for more than the span of human years? Here, also, crash his arrows; here, in the farthest glade, sounds the gallop of the pale horse. But he does not hunt this cover with all his hounds, for the game is thin and small: and if you were but alert and wary, if you lodged ever in the deepest thickets, you too might ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Umslopogaas saw that this might not endure, for presently the shield would be torn aside and the stranger must be killed. Now in the breast of the lioness still stood the half of Umslopogaas's broken spear, and its blade was a span deep in her breast. Then this thought came into the mind of Umslopogaas, that he would drive the spear home or die. So he rose swiftly, for strength came back to him in his need, and ran to where the lioness worried at him who lay beneath the shield. She did not heed him, so ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... the "early Christian basilica in its plenitude." The high campanile tower, which is already seen all over London, is a striking feature in a building quite dissimilar from those to which we in England are accustomed. The great entrance at the west end has an arch of forty feet span, and encloses three doorways, of which the central one is only to be used on solemn occasions by the Archbishop. One feature of the interior decoration will be the mosaic pictures in the marble panels. The building is still incomplete, and not open ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... etc. Reinhard says correctly that sweet memories are frequently nothing more or less than outbursts of hidden passion and attacks of sensual love. Seume is mistaken in his assertion that mysticism lies mainly in weakness of the nerves and colic—it lies a span deeper. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... changing its winding course after the manner of prairie-rivers, has long since shifted its bed some distance to the south, leaving only a portion of the old bridge to span what in high water becomes an arm of the river, but which ordinarily serves to convey the water from a neighboring mill. We lean upon its guard-rail while fancy is busy with the past. We picture the prairie-schooners winding around ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... with leaves from the very ground instead of boughs, which are mostly two yards long and a yard broad, having a very large rib in the middle. The fruit is a bunch of ten or twelve plantains, each a span long, and as thick as a man's wrist, somewhat crooked or bending inwards. These grow on a leafy stalk on the middle of the plant, being at first green, but grow yellow and tender as they ripen. When the rind is stripped off, the inner pulp is also yellowish and pleasant ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... rendered useless because a broken bridge has cut them in half. All over France are these bridges of iron, of splendid masonry, some decorated with statues, some dating back hundreds of years, but now with a span blown out or entirely destroyed and sprawling in the river. All of these material things—motor-cars, stone bridges, railroad-tracks, telegraph-lines—can be replaced. Money can restore them. But money cannot restore the noble trees of France ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... was daylight. And when he looked round the kitchen, for he slept in a corner of it, he could scarce believe it wasn't, for it was all tidied up, the fire burning beautiful, and everything spick and span as his mother loved to have it. "Poor mother," thought Robin, "why has she got up so early? and how sound I must have been sleeping ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... cutting, nearly seventy feet in height of banks, with sands of yellow and green, and stains of iron and strata of marl, some of which had fallen back into the excavation and threatened the navigation again; and, when he saw a bridge, called the Buck, leap the chasm ninety feet overhead, by a span that then seemed sublimity itself, he ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... cleaned paintwork for an hour, after which the planks were thoroughly squeegeed and dried. Then all hands went to work to polish brasswork until eight bells, by which time the ship looked as spick and span as if she had been kept under a glass case, ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... that his figures affect us at moments as creatures all too suddenly, too alarmingly, too menacingly met. Meagre, primitive, undeveloped, he yet is immeasurably strong; he even suggests that if he had lived the due span of years later Michael Angelo might have found a rival. Not that he is given, however, to complicated postures or superhuman flights. The something strange that troubles and haunts us in his work springs rather from a kind ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Evidently it was filled with fish, because only the top Plimsoll number was showing. But the skipper was far from average. Brad Marbek, as Rick saw him on the deck overhead, was a bull of a man. He was about six feet tall, but his width made him look shorter. His shoulder span would have done credit to a Percheron horse, and from his shoulders his torso dropped in almost a straight line. His waist lacked only an inch or two of being as wide as his shoulders. His legs were short and thick ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... might enter the contest, but I did not finish in time. The plans of the other engineers were all rejected. I continued to work on mine. After the contest I happened to pick up a piece of torn plan out of the office wastebasket, and it gave me a suggestion how to improve the central span of ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... so he followed the sweet sound, Till faith had traversed her appointed span, And murmured as he pressed the sacred ground: "It is the ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... deprived her of days and weeks of happiness. Such a short span of joy had been allotted to her, and he had not allowed her to have even that. He had called her away. He dared not trust himself to write any word of sympathy. It seemed to him that to do so would be a hideous irony, and he sent the line in pencil which ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... be used for lofty flights, to span great canyons, to rout the chattering bluejay from the topmost limb of a pine, and sooner or later we shall pierce an ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... with violence the thread she span. "They have talked you over, sir," she said curtly. "When you went ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... her hair alight with mystic color, the passion that had prompted him to this end was stirred anew, dissipating any intrusive doubts. The veering and flickering sheen seemed but a web of entangling irradiation. A span of silence became an interminable period to her, with no sight of fresh horses nor sign of preparation for ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... sailor came along—it might put years on to his life to have a pull at the oars. You remember that old sailor we saw in charge of the engine back there at the government tank? You saw how he had the engine?—clean and bright as a new pin—everything spick-and-span and shipshape, and his hut fixed up like a ship's cabin. I believe he thinks he's at sea half his time, and shoving her through it, instead of pumping muddy water out of a hole in the baking scrubs for starving stock. Or maybe he reckons he's ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... was magnificent. From horizon to horizon was one vast span of blue, whitening as it dipped earthward. Miles upon miles to the east and southeast the desert unrolled itself, white, naked, inhospitable, palpitating and shimmering under the sun, unbroken by so much as a rock or cactus stump. In the distance it assumed all manner of faint colors, pink, ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... we scarcely know The wide world's moving ebb and flow, The clanging currents ring and shock, But we are rooted to the rock. And thus at ending of his span, Blind, deaf, and indolent, does Man ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... from the dedicatory verses. On the bridges which span our streams we sometimes record the names of the commissioners or the engineers, or the bridge builders responsible for the structure. Perhaps we are wise in thinking these prosaic inscriptions suitable for our ugly iron bridges. Their more picturesque stone structures ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... this for one life's span. That all men born are mortal, but not Man: And we men bring death lives by night to sow, That man may reap and eat ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... their base from the sleeping waters of the winding canal, cloud-capped at their lofty summit from the bank of vapor that hovers along the entire range, rock-ribbed, precipitous, magnificent in silent, stubborn strength, the towering heights of Maryland span the scene from east to west, and stand superb, the background to the picture. All as yet is sombre in tone, black, dark green, and brown and gray. The mist hangs heavy over everything, and the twinkle of an occasional camp-fire is but the sodden glow of ember whose life is ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... glistening with the soft light of deep friendship. "Jimmy boy! to think you beat 'em to it! I figured ten to one odds that it was a tramp chartered by Papa Leslie— And then to see you pop up in the sternsheets, spic and span as a laundry ad! ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... well fitted out, spick and span in fresh carpets and paint, and crowded to the utmost capacity for comfort. Every stateroom was full; each seat at the tables occupied. Not a foot of space above or below decks was left unused, but provision was made for all, and ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... over the marge of the horrible deep Hangs and hovers a bridge with its phantom-like span, [21] Not by man was it built, o'er the vastness to sweep; Such thought never came to the daring of man! The stream roars beneath—late and early it raves— But the bridge, which it threatens, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of high renown, Cunning to hurl the dart, to drive the steed In war, and deftly cast the lance afar, Born at one birth beside Sangarius' banks Of Periboea to him, Celtus one, And Eubius the other. But not long His boundless wealth enjoyed they, for the Fates Span them a thread of life exceeding brief. As on one day they saw the light, they died On one day by the same hand. To the heart Of one Neoptolemus sped a javelin; one He smote down with a massy stone that crashed ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... Memory by Practice. All aspects of memory can be improved by practice, some aspects much, other aspects little. The memory span for digits, or letters, or words, or for objects cannot be much improved, but memory for ideas that are related, as the ideas of a story, can be considerably improved. In extensive experiments conducted in the author's ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... tailor, and the weaver, and the wheelwright, and the blacksmith,—but, hey presto! Master Warner set his imps a-churning, and turned ye out mail and tunic, worsted and wagon, kettle and pot, spick and span new, from his brewage of vapour and sea-coal. Oh, have I not heard enough of the sorcerer from my brother, who works in the Chepe for Master Stokton, the mercer!—and Master Stokton was one of the worshipful deputies ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... model dwelling. Once it knew better days. Once it was the residence of a shipowner, in the days when the London docks were full of clippers, and shipowners husbanded their own ships and liked to live near their work. The house has a broad and noble staircase, having a carved handrail as wide as a span; but much of the old and carved interior woodwork of the house is missing—firewood sometimes runs short there—and the rest is buried under years of paint ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... much followed among them; there is not a span of earth without cultivation, and they observe the winds and propitious stars. With the exception of a few left in the city all go out armed, and with flags and drums and trumpets sounding, to the fields, for the ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... the dredged channel and completely blocking it lay a single span of an iron bridge. Although twisted and misshapen, it was still intact, the framework of its overhead truss-work retaining its cage-like shape. Behind it the logs had of course piled up in a jam, which, sinking rapidly to the bed of the channel, ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... sleepy twitter of the birds; he had seen one star, two and three, come out; before his steadfast, brooding stare the trees had slowly lost their green for the somber shade of night. And now it was indeed night; that hushed and awe-inspiring span of gloom when worlds most sin; when men and women do their sobbing; do their yielding; count ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... House, from whence started an omnibus for the ferry, she was quickly rattling out of Bumsteadville in a vehicle remarkable for the great number and variety of noises it could make when maddened into motion by a span of equine rivals in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... a room almost bare of furniture, and both tried to rise on our entrance; but one, who was young as years go, had her lap full of little worn shoes, and the other, who looked older than the allotted span, was nursing a ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... adding something to his scanty resources, obtained the job of hauling a quantity of iron ore from the ore beds near Little York to a forge and furnace at Fullerville. Willard with an ox-team and his uncle Henry with a span of fine horses, were employed for the most part to do ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... failing interest to all strangers. Traffic passing through, consisting of tugs towing barges, colliers, of large and small tonnage, freight boats and occasional government craft can be seen at close view from the highways on either side and from the bridges that span the canal. The opening and closing of the two huge jack-knife bridges is seldom without interested spectators during ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... from hence twelve days ago accompanied by a cargo of Poesy directed to Mr. Hobhouse, all spick and span, and in MS.; you will see what it is like. I have given it to Master Southey, and he shall have more before ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... of his father, Sir Ewan Dhu, Lochiel quitted his home. He left a wife whom he loved, a parent whom he reverenced, and whose span of life could not be long extended; he left a numerous and prosperous family, upon a sense of duty, a principle of loyalty, an adherence, so fixed and so sure among the Highlanders, to his engagements. The name of Cameron does not appear among the chieftains ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... ran, That to the ground came horse and man, 610 The blood out of their Helmets span, So sharpe were their incounters; And though they to the earth were throwne, Yet quickly they regain'd their owne, Such nimblenesse was neuer showne, They were ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... hatter gi' 'im credit fer, an' dat wuz keepin' his face an' han's clean, an' in takin' keer er his cloze. Nobody, not even his mammy, had ter patch his britches er tack buttons on his coat. See 'im whar you may an' when you mought, he wuz allers lookin' spick an' span des like he done come right out'n a ban'-box. You know what de riddle say 'bout 'im: when he stan' up he sets down, an' when he walks he hops. He'd 'a' been mighty well thunk un, ef it hadn't but 'a' been fer his habits. He holler so much at night dat de yuther ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... not the heart alone a God proclaim! Blot revelation from the mind of man! Yea, let him not e'en Nature's features scan; There is within him a low voice, the same Throughout the varied scenes of being's span, That whispers, God. And doth not conscience speak Though sin its wildest force upon it wreak! Born with us—never dying—ever preaching Of right and wrong, with reference aye to Him— And doth not Hope, on toward the future ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... exhausted by the pilgrimage, We found a sort of natural divan, Whence we could view the landscape, or engage Our eyes in rapture on the heaven's wide span. ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... mind were without price. It was owing to this that poverty was unknown to them, as well as disease. The absolute purity of all that they ate preserved an activity of vital power long exceeding our span of life. The length of their year, measured by the two seasons, was the same as ours, but the women who had marked a hundred of them in their lifetime, looked younger and fresher, and were more supple of limb than myself, yet I had ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... day I was in Hyde Park, gazing at the people in the drive, when a spick-and-span and very brand-new open carriage went by, and in it sad Mrs. Deane (that was), all alone in her glory, and looking very sulky indeed. She recognized me and bowed, and I bowed back again, with just a moment's little flutter of the heart—an ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... was otherwise. Many vehicles came dashing down Tinplate Street: carriages, public and private, of every variety, from the rattletrap cab hired off the stand, or the decent coach from the livery stable, to the smart spick-and-span brougham, with its well-appointed horses and servants in neat livery. They all set down at the same door, and took up from it at any hour between midnight and dawn, waiting patiently in file in the wide street round the corner, till the summons came as each ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... but if he be able to redeeme himselfe for money, they let him go free. Their king weareth about his necke 300. great and most beautifull vnions, and saith euery day 300. prayers vnto his god. He weareth vpon his finger also a stone of a span long which seemeth to be a flame of fire, and therefore when he weareth it, no man dare once approch vnto him: and they say that there is not any stone in the whole world of more value then it. Neither could at any time the great Tartarian Emperour of Katay ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... between Clay and Washington, opposite the "Plaza"—this was on the 3rd of April, 1860. It was a semi-weekly service, each rider to carry 15 pounds of letters—rate $5 per half ounce. Stations were erected about 25 miles apart and each rider was expected to span three stations, going at the rate of eight miles per hour. The first messenger to reach San Francisco from the East arrived April 14, 1860, and was enthusiastically received. Time for letters from New York was reduced to 13 days, the actual time taking from ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley
... known you over thirty years—or they will tell you that considering your age you look well, or a thousand and one things of that kind, as if it were a fault or even a crime to be alive for a certain span of time,—whereas if you simply shook off such unnecessary attentions and went your own way, taking freely of the constant output of life and energy supplied to you by Nature, you would outwit all ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... before—passing, generation after generation, into the awful shadow which no eye except that of faith can penetrate. Life is a little, little day—hardly longer, in the end, for the man in his prime than for the infant of an hour's span. ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... at a vague conviction that his sister was not dead, but lived on in him, as she had promised. There is a Breton superstition that those who die young are not dead, but stay and hover over the places where they lived until they have fulfilled the normal span of their existence.—So Antoinette lived out ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... meant cities growing larger than provinces, factories growing larger than cities; they meant the empire of the slum. They meant a degree of detailed repetition and dehumanised division of labour, to which no man born would surrender his brief span in the sunshine, if he could hope to beat his ploughshare into a sword. The nations of the earth were not to surrender to the Kaiser; they were to surrender to Krupp, his master and theirs; the French, the British, ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... many respects essentially different from its Roman model. In the Temple of Peace three arches cover the enormous length of over 250 feet, and seriously diminish the apparent size; in St. Paul's their span is less than half of this. Indeed, in this respect Wren adopted a via media between the Roman and the Anglo-Norman and Pointed. Old St. Paul's, for instance, contained twice as many arches in the same length as its successor, and Rochester still more. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... Arthur's Court Tom Thumb did live; A Man of mickle Might, The best of all the Table round, And eke a doubty Knight, In Stature but an Inch in Height, Or quarter of a Span; Then think you not this worthy Knight Was ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... liberal, and has given us, in addition, a native gooseberry span-worm, the larva of a small moth. These several worms, unchecked, would soon render the culture of the currant and gooseberry impossible in the regions where they abounded; and, at first, horticulturists were almost in despair, for the pests seemed proof against the usual insecticides and means ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... nature. In this silent solitary place, with the walled field which was once Calleva Atrebatum at my feet, I yet have a sense of satisfaction, of security, never felt in a land that had no historic past. The knowledge that my individual life is but a span, a breath; that in a little while I too must wither and mingle like one of those fallen yellow leaves with the mould, does not grieve me. I know it and yet disbelieve it; for am I not here alive, where men ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... air like a sentinel who has taken the alarm. In a moment I recognised him as Michael Angelo's David. I turned with a certain relief from his sinister strength to a slender figure in bronze, stationed beneath the high light loggia, which opposes the free and elegant span of its arches to the dead masonry of the palace; a figure supremely shapely and graceful; gentle, almost, in spite of his holding out with his light nervous arm the snaky head of the slaughtered Gorgon. His name is Perseus, and you may read his story, not in the Greek mythology, but in ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... in the first hole. If he succeeds, he is allowed to place his thumb on the far edge of the first hole, and using his hand as a pair of dinders, by a twist of the wrist he marks with his longest finger a curved line on the ground. This is called "taking a span." From the span line he shoots at the second hole, and if successful continues on to the third. If this is won, he takes a span backward for the middle hole. If he reaches the first hole, he repeats it over, but ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... wasn't going to quit it. Buffalo Bill's Show was coming over soon, and a man who could drive eight horses was sure of a job any time. These mugs over here didn't know beans about driving anything more than a span. What was the matter with me hanging on and waiting for Buffalo Bill? He was sure I could ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... and swards. The men were negligible beside them. And they were not only fashionably and very fashionably attired—all their frocks and all their hats and all their parasols and all their boots were new, glittering, spick-and-span; were complex and expensive; not one feared the sun. The conception of what those innumerable chromatic toilettes had cost in the toil, stitch by stitch, of malodorous workrooms and in the fatigue of pale, industrious ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... men is worthy of respectful examination, although I do not think that because an opinion is widespread it is therefore true. Thus the idea that in the remote past there was some kind of paradise or golden age and that the span of human life was once much longer than now is found among most nations. Yet research and analogy suggest that it is without foundation. The fact that about half the population of the world has come under ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... degrees descend in ordered succession from the highest to the lowest, still contracting their circuit; and of these slopes those which looked toward the south were all full of vines and olives and almonds and cherries and figs and many another kind of fruit-bearing trees, without a span thereof being wasted; whilst those which faced the North Star[338] were all covered with thickets of dwarf oaks and ashes and other trees as green and straight as might be. The middle plain, which had no other inlet than that ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... unwieldy car of triumph, bearing a freight of eager faces behind its windows, and carrying a crowd of sitters, precariously clustered wherever a perch could be found on its swaying roof, under the verdant span of the arches and ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... undress her, and smelt her favourite perfume, and lay in her bed, to complete her period of rest, closing her eyes there with a child's faith in pillows. Flying lights and blood-blotches rushed within a span of her forehead. She met this symptom promptly with a medical receipt; yet she had no sleep; nor would coffee give her sleep. She shrank from opium as deleterious to the constitution, and her mind settled on ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... striketh me That you should be A gentleman, And drive a span, Live high, drink wine, Ask folks to dine, And make a dash. With poorhouse trash You should not be— With folks ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... home from the office, where They think he's just a man The same as they are, with his hair All slick and spick and span. Oh, don't I make it in a mess! It makes us scream for joy. "Sh—sh!" he says, "they mustn't guess ...
— A Jolly Jingle-Book • Various
... Jester's old bauble— Drink and be glad while you can. Sorry and cynical symbol, Ghastly old caricature, We, too, must walk in thy footsteps, We but a little endure. Bah! since the end is so sure, Let us out-frolic our span, Death is a hush and a darkness— Drink and ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... a new interest in this strange lad, who had been a wanderer the brief span of his days, and yet strange to say seemed to possess the instincts of a ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... murdered," the officer hastened to add, seeing my mistake. "He was on the middle span of the bridge when it was carried away by the flood, and that's ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... Spencer had a flash of revelation. There was love and love. The love of a man for a woman, and of a woman for a man, of a mother for the child at her knee, of that child for its mother. But that the great actuating motive of a man's maturity, of the middle span, was vested along with his dreams, his pride and his love, ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... only ones who are concerned, either," Vandenbosch broke in. "If that hellish thing isn't destroyed, more will die. Who knows how long a beast like that may live? What is its life-span? Nobody knows!" He waved a hand in the air. "For all we know, it could go on for ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the game amounted to, at the end of a man's short span! What a senseless repetition it seemed—the same old comedies, the same old tragedies, the same old bits of generosity, and greed, of weakness, hope, and despair! Except for a warm little heartful of love—ah love! He paused ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... before spectacles like this. To know that the span is two hundred and seventy-eight feet may help realization at home, where it may be laid out, staked and looked at; it exceeds a block of Fifth Avenue in New York. To know that the apex of the rainbow's curve is three hundred and nine feet above your wondering eyes means nothing to you ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... again swore by the life of the King, that from that spot he would not turn back a span's breadth until they had obtained the information they had come to seek. The sailors shouted that they were many, and that they feared death, though their captain took no account of it. Vasco da Gama replied that he took the same account of death as any of them, but that they ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... there, but his change of abode did not alter his title. He was always spoken of as Ulf of Romsdal. He and his old enemy Haldor the Fierce speedily became fast friends; and so was it with their wives, Astrid and Herfrida, who also took mightily to each other. They span, and carded wool, and sewed together oftentimes, and discussed the affairs of Horlingdal, no doubt with ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... might have hoped that future years, and even future generations, might see Mr. Gladstone's face and hear his matchless voice, and receive the lessons of his unrivaled experience— we might, perhaps, grieve to-day as those who have no hope. But that is not the case. He had long exceeded the span of mortal life; and his latter months had been months of unspeakable pain and distress. He is now in that rest for which he sought and prayed, and which was to give him relief from an existence which had become a burden to him. Surely this should not be an occasion entirely ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... Tom was hauled back, sheepish and sulky, and pushed into the house by the womankind; presently emerging in full bandsman's dress, tied shoe-laces—in every way as spick and span as father or mother could desire. Brandishing his instrument, he ran clattering down the street to overtake his brother, only just in time apparently, for, a minute or two after he had disappeared, the distant sounds of ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... listened to Lady Flora. The smile seemed to come from a great way off. The longer she sat there the more that impression grew; he seemed so much and so naturally a part of the scene and one of the company. She was so emphatically not one of them, save by the merest accident and for an evening's span. The sense of difference and distance troubled her. She thought of Cecily alone at home, and grew more troubled still. She felt absurd too, because she had been trying to help Harry. If that had to be done, she supposed Lady Flora would do it now. The idea was bitter. Where difference ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... when the high sea span About the rocks a web of foam, I saw the ghost of a Cornishman Come home. I saw the ghost of a Cornishman Run from the weariness of war, I heard him laughing as he ran Across his unforgotten shore. The great cliff, gilded by the west, Received him as an honoured guest. The green sea, shining ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson
... waterspouts, monster spirals of the hue of storm, with flaring sweeps at top and bottom that welded roof and floor into one terrific whole. Sheer from side to side stretched that portentous level cloud; it was a span of an epoch; and on either side it was rooted in those awful columns, seemingly alive, as though ready at any instant to suck up the earth into ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... perhaps to the maternal blood in her veins, Madame de Longueville at length surrendered her heart to the daring aspirant. She could no longer plead early youth as an excuse, for she had already numbered twenty-nine summers, and was only distant by a very small span from that formidable epoch in woman's life which a discriminating writer of the present day has happily termed the crisis. That turning point in the Duchess's career was destined to prove fatal to her, and the crisis ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... hear At midnight on the blue and moonlit deep The song and oar of Adria's gondolier, By distance mellow'd, o'er the waters sweep; 'T is sweet to see the evening star appear; 'T is sweet to listen as the night-winds creep From leaf to leaf; 't is sweet to view on high The rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... even truth; whoever has occupied that tribune erected by his own hands, fulfilled the functions of that magistracy to which he is self-appointed,—in short, whosoever has been, for however brief a span, that proxy of public opinion, looks upon himself when remanded to private life as an exile, and the moment a chance is offered to him puts out an eager hand to snatch ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... knittles, grommets, and laniards; they are termed double or single clues, according as there are one or two at each end. Latterly iron grommets or rings were introduced, but did not afford the required spread, and in some cases triangular irons, or span-shackles were substituted, called Spanish clues, formed by fixing the knittles at equal distances upon a piece of rope instead of a grommet, which having an eye spliced, and a laniard placed at each end, extends the hammock in the same way as a double clue.—From ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... clasp of steel; for each of the four knew that these two unions were not passing fancies, lightly entered into and as lightly cast aside, but were true partnerships which would endure throughout the entire span of life. ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... cumbrous drawbridge, nor would it be wise, even if possible, for the noise of it might give the alarm. But there was the postern. Gian Maria must construct him a light, portable bridge, and have it in readiness to span the moat and silently pour his soldiers into the castle ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... other folk thought for. The Whigs made an unco crawing what they wad do with their auld enemies, and in special wi' Sir Robert Redgauntlet. But there were ower mony great folks dipped in the same doings, to mak a spick and span new warld. So Parliament passed it a' ower easy; and Sir Robert, bating that he was held to hunting foxes instead of Covenanters, remained just the man he was. [The caution and moderation of King William III, and his principles of unlimited ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... therefore, unfit to meet such a master of war as Napoleon. Two battles were fought at Jena and Auerstadt, by which the Prussian power was overthrown; more than 50,000 men were slain. These battles were followed by the capture of Erfurt, Span-dau, Potsdam, Berlin, Luben, Stettin, Kuestrin, Hameln, Nienburg, and Magdeburg; and by victories over Prince Hohenlohe, near Prenzlow; and over the reserve army of Brucher, towards the lower Elbe. Within six weeks after the battle of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... opportunity; but Reddin was afraid to leave Hazel alone, in case she might see Sally; so September came and drew out its shining span of days, and still ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... of the end of Troy, and of that flood Of passion by the blood Of heroes consecrate, by poet's craft Hallowed, if that thin waft Of godhead blown upon thee stretch thy song To span such store of strong And splendid vision of immortal themes Late harvested in dreams, Albeit long years laid up in tilth. Most meet Thou sing that slim and sweet Fair woman for whose bosom and delight Paris, as well he might, Wrought all the woe, and held her to ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... in a little time arrive at perfection. And Theophrastus is reported to have reproached nature at his death for giving to stags and crows so long a life, which was of no use to them, but allowing only so short a span to men, to whom length of days would have been of the greatest use; for if the life of man could have been lengthened, it would have been able to provide itself with all kinds of learning, and with ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... that Winchester is the largest cathedral in Northern Europe, and it is not until one is within the walls that the great length of the cathedral begins to become real and its majesty is properly appreciated. The total span, from end to end, of 556 feet, compared with the 537 feet of Ely, the 525 of York, the 524 of Lincoln, and the 516 of Canterbury, would not alone produce the effect of almost infinite vastness, and is certainly not realised either in a distant prospect from the hills or in a ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... theological subjects, somewhat, she felt sure, beyond Margaret's comprehension. She lived on dry crusts for many a day to sanction her extravagance in purchasing several books, one after the other, suited to the little maiden's taste. Margaret was delighted to receive them, and while Janet sat and span she read them aloud to her, and amply rewarded was the kind nurse for her self-denial. Not dreaming that Margaret could possibly educate herself, she still continued turning in her mind how that desirable object should ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... proud Tarquin still. Now right across proud Tarquin 365 A corpse was Julius laid; And Titus groaned with rage and grief, And at Valerius made. Valerius struck at Titus, And lopped off half his crest; 370 But Titus stabbed Valerius A span deep in the breast. Like a mast snapped by the tempest, Valerius reeled and fell. Ah! woe is me for the good house 375 That loves the people well! Then shouted loud the Latines; And with one rush they bore The struggling Romans backward ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... round, like open presses, That shawed the dead in their last dresses, And, by some devilish cantraip sleight, Each in its cauld hand held a light: By which heroic Tam was able To note, upon the haly table, A murderer's banes, in gibbet-airns; Twa span-lang, wee, unchristened bairns; A thief, new-cutted frae a rape— Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape; Five tomahawks, wi' bluid red-rusted; Five scimitars, wi' murder crusted; A garter which a babe had strangled; A knife a father's ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... was that of a man holding the centre span of a bridge of which every span on either side of ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... Life in California, in those days, was a dolce far niente kind of existence that was most captivating, although ruffled at times by troubles with the many Indians on all sides. The days sped by, each one making but the slightest notch in the span of life. Juana continued her teaching, riding to the mission every day, where she spent the morning. During the rest of the day, after returning home, she busied herself about the house in all domestic duties, or in embroidering, at which she was an adept, her work being much in request, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... in his travelling jacket, and occupied in painting, elegantly, one of those natty pairs of boots in which he daily promenaded the Boulevards. A couple of pairs of tough buff gloves had been undergoing some pipe-claying operation under his hands; no man stepped out so spick and span, with a hat so nicely brushed, with a stiff cravat tied so neatly under a fat little red face, with a blue frock-coat so scrupulously fitted to a punchy little person, as Major British, about whom we have written these two pages. He stared rather hardly at my ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... are its Roman re- mains, which are of the first order. The new French fashions prevail in many of its streets; the old houses are paltry, and the good houses are new; while beside my hotel rose a big spick-and-span church, which had the oddest air of having been intended for Brooklyn or Cleveland. It is true that this church looked out on a square completely French, - a square of a fine modern disposition, flanked on one side by a classical palais de ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... to me and the family—although he's his mother's pet; the divil can't stand him for dress—and, moreover, he's given to liquor and card-playin', and is altogether goin' to the bad. Widin the last two or three days he has bought himself a new hat, a new pair o' brogues, and a pair o' span-new breeches—and, upon my conscience, it wasn't from me or mine he got the money ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... High March, where Prosper was. Prosper! She knew that every mincing step of the donkey took her further from him, but she was powerless to protest or to pray; life scarce whispered in her yet. And what span of miles or hours, after all, could set her wider from him than discovery, the shame, the yelling of ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... to make it not only a wonder of architecture but a wonder also of statuary, the facade having many niches, each to be filled with a sacred figure. But Michelangelo always dreamed on a scale utterly disproportionate to the foolish little span of life allotted to us and the S. Lorenzo facade was ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... und soldiers Vas all de funeral knell; De ring of sporn und carpine Vas all de sacrin bell. Mit hoontin knife und sabre Dey digged de grave a span, From German eyes blue gleamin De holy ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... met, that which he would have been to him an hour ago. Yet, though as a man he must know nothing, his priest's heart was heavy in his breast. It was a strange home-coming—to pass from the ordered piety of the college: to the whirl of politics and plots in which good and evil span round together—honest and fiery zeal for God's cause, mingled with what he was persuaded was crime and abomination. He had thought that a priest's life would be a simple thing, but it seemed ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... He wore gloves: you know he only puts them on on parade days; and turned out for the occasion spick and span. He ought to be a general officer. He looks like a field-marshal—don't he? You should have seen him bowing to Mrs. Gandish and the Miss Gandishes, dressed all in their best, round the cake-tray! He takes his glass of wine, and sweeps them all round ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Privateer Boat came on board said Spanish Schooner with a Lieut. Christop'r Miller[15] by Name and seven more Seamen. That he this Deponent shewed said Lieut. his Licence telling him at the same time that they were Spaniards and the Vessel and Cargoe Span'h property, From whence they came and whither Bound. That said Lieut. and People seemed very Civil and Regular till they discovered the Money which as soon as they had done, they Insisted on the Spaniards having ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various |
